The Un-Natural

Onetime baseball klutz John C. Reilly--who plays Kevin Costner's batterymate in the upcoming For the Love of the Game--somehow morphed into a major league look-alike. Thanks to his coaches, come softball season, you can, too.

The man can take apart an M16 rifle wearing a blindfold. He can pop the lug nuts off a sizzling NASCAR tire in 6.8 seconds. With a plastic T-grip paddle and the good grace of God, he can muscle through Class VI rapids on a Montana river. He will even squeeze his six-foot-one, 190-pound frame into a red G-string and slap a porn star's naked backside, if that is what the job requires.

John C. Reilly, Hollywood chameleon, will be whomever you want him to be, if the script looks good and the numbers add up. Now, having weathered war (The Thin Red Line) and water (The River Wild) and endless rounds of whoopie (Boogie Nights), he has kindly agreed to stay at home and take ninety-mile-an-hour shots to the head. At least he will get to wear armor for this one: a helmet, a chest protector, a face mask, and one vitally important fiberglass cup.

The only reason Reilly's doing all this is For the Love of the Game, Universal's summer baseball movie starring that most seasoned of ball-playing actors, Kevin Costner, as an aging Detroit Tigers pitcher facing the biggest game of his career. And against the Yankees, no less. As the man behind the plate, Reilly's job is to catch anything Costner tosses his way, a challenge for even the most adept actor. But the thirty-three-year-old Reilly has decided to give it a try, even at the risk of making a major league fool of himself.

Fortunately, the movie studio has called in the experts. San Francisco Giants catcher Brent Mayne and his father, Mike, an unflinching college catching coach, have come to Reilly's Los Angeles home to teach him to crouch the crouch, catch the catch, and scratch the scratch of the big-time ballplayer. All in just two weeks, before principal filming begins at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. But as he fumbles with catcher's equipment in a scruffy dog park, Reilly, as would anyone whose grown-up baseball experience is limited to a once-in-five-years pickup coed Whiffle-ball game, looks terrified. "Can I do this?" he says. "Can I pull this off? What the hell do I know about baseball?"

Virtually nothing, it turns out.

"I never played Little League," Reilly says, his thinning curls stretched back by his raised catcher's mask. "I don't follow the game. As a kid in Chicago, one guy would have a sixteen-inch softball, one guy had a mitt, the sewer caps were our bases, the ball would hit a car window, and the game would be over."

The con begins with the actor swinging a bat. In his attempt to fake his way into big-league form, Reilly steps up to the plate with a white-knuckled grip and a lumbering, funky-chicken stance. His Louisville Slugger oscillates wildly back and forth overhead. In short, Reilly looks as if he's ready to go clubbing saber-toothed tigers. "When I first saw John's skill level," Brent, hardly an imperious sort of fellow, says later, "I got really worried. He had to learn how to swing, how to throw, how to run, how to stand--things I just assumed everybody knew. He didn't."

So the Maynes must start from scratch. To teach Reilly to catch, they pummel him with balls in the batting cage. To show him how to steal home, they make him belly flop across a kiddie Slip N' Slide mat. To teach him manners, they unleash on him a barrel-chested college kid who serves up ninety-mile-an-hour fastballs. Reilly feels almost unworthy of the punishing regimen. "I just keep thanking God I hooked up with you guys," he tells them.

In truth, Reilly manages to get himself into a mess like this every year or so. As one of Hollywood's most dependable character actors, he must curl up so tightly into his often small but wrenching roles that he becomes almost invisible onscreen. John C. Reilly disappears, and we are left with a drummer or a gambler or Dirk Diggler's second banana. "The downside," he says, "is most of the time, you don't get the girl." Yet he has persevered, logging two weeks at a North Carolina racetrack so that he could look convincing as Tom Cruise's pit guy in Days of Thunder. Enduring the hell of military boot camp for a role in Casualties of War. And don't even ask what he had to do for the porn-world epic Boogie Nights. As he puts it, "It all starts to look the same after a while."

Today, standing in the batter's box, Reilly is once again trying to look as if he does something else for a living. He has an elastic band tied around his forearms so that his elbows will stay together, pro style, when he swings the bat. Mayne the Younger is off to Reilly's right, on his knees, tossing one lob after another, but with the constricting brace on, Reilly can't connect. He is, in the nicest sense of the phrase, spazzing out. "It doesn't matter if you hit the ball, John," Brent reassures him. "You just want to look like you could hit it if you wanted to."

By now, the Maynes have given up trying to turn Reilly into a pro. Instead, Mike and Brent shower the actor with baseball mantras: Always work your glove before settling into a squat. Don't look at your ball when you take it out of the glove. Never touch a rolling grounder with your bare hands. Grab some dirt when your throwing arm grazes the ground. Pick up a blade of grass when you step into the batter's box. "The beauty of baseball," Mike says, "is that certain mannerisms can make you look like you know what you're doing even if you don't have a clue."

Even the best actors have failed on the diamond. Sure, Redford had a convincing windup in The Natural, and even Charlie Sheen pitched perfect strikes in Major League. But look at De Niro in Bang the Drum Slowly or, even worse, William Bendix in the old Babe Ruth Story and, as Brent puts it, "you'll see guys who learned baseball by sitting on the couch."

Unfortunately for Reilly, this isn't just any baseball movie; it's Costner's fourth hardball flick, meaning Reilly's got to look legit or he'll stand out like a smoldering cow patty in a field of dreams. His only salvation is to go deep. "For me," he says, "it's more a question of the interior life of the baseball catcher. What does it take to receive a hundred-mile-an-hour fastball? What does it mean to be so close to a man swinging a bat? What the hell do they talk about on the pitcher's mound?" Over the course of his training, he will learn all that and more; that a curveball, for instance, curves up to down, not side to side; that a batter who sneaks a look at a catcher's signs will invariably be hit by the next pitch; and that the banter on the mound is normally no more profound than "Check out that Kim Basinger look-alike behind third base."

Reilly, meanwhile, would also learn about fear. Catching against the batting machine is one thing, but put a college senior on the mound or, better yet, bring Reilly to Yankee Stadium and have top players throw fastballs at him with the cameras rolling, and it's a whole new ball game. The terror of facing a real-life pitcher penetrates Reilly's padded chest plate and spreads across his sizable gut.

"There's this guy on the mound," he says, "and he's coming at you with animal energy. I don't know this guy! Is he going to be accurate? Is he going to kill me? And then you prepare yourself with everything you've learned in training. You squat into position and brace your arm and you think you're ready. Then the guy hurls this missile at you, and every last ounce of composure, all that training, just goes flying out of your head and you sit there with your eyes closed, hoping you're still alive."

Did somebody say "Take two"?

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YOU DON'T NEED SKILLS SO MUCH AS THESE MANNERISMS TO MAKE PEOPLE

THINK YOU'VE BEEN AROUND THE BASES

BATTING: Create a ceremony. "Do the same thing every time you bat," Mike says. "Take three practice swings. Take time-out with a hand motion to the ump. Knock dirt off your spikes. Cross yourself. Adjust yourself. It makes you seem like you have rituals." FIELDING: Never use your glove to pick up a dead ball. Use your throwing hand, getting a firm grip by pushing the ball into the ground. A rolling ball should be scooped up using your glove as a dustpan. "A good way to train to do this," Mike says, "is to actually strap a dustpan to your glove hand and try it out." CATCHING: "Behind the plate," says Brent, "work the glove leather [with your throwing hand] prior to settling into position. Before the pitch, grab some dirt as your throwing hand brushes the ground. That's a sign that you're prepared to throw a runner out." BASERUNNING: Hold your batting gloves in your hands. "Pros know that they can break a finger when they steal bases and slide," Brent explains. "Having gloves in your hands keeps your hands safely in a fist." SALIVATING: Learn to spit through your two front teeth. "It's just something every player seems to know how to do," Brent says.

1 HITTING You're probably not going to play a pro catcher in a Hollywood movie. But you just might play on the company softball team. The advice San Francisco Giants catcher Brent Mayne (and his father, Mike) gave John C. Reilly will also help improve your slugging skills. Especially when you're up against a slow pitch from Shirley in data processing. Here's how to blast the rock on that after-work outing.

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A. Embrace the fear. "Hitting a small, round object speeding toward your head is probably the most difficult challenge in sports," says Mike. "The key is to release the tension." Keep a delicate grip on the bat, making sure the barrel remains at twelve o'clock, where it will feel almost weightless--"like liquid in your hands," Brent says.

B. When major leaguers swing, they keep the back elbow up high and away from the body, lock the front leg, then pivot the back foot 90 degrees during the swing. They also follow the ball from the instant it leaves the pitcher's fingertips directly to the head of the bat--looking down the barrel, as Reilly is here.

C. However, swing may be the wrong word. "You actually should be throwing the bat barrel at the ball, not swinging at it," Brent says. To practice, stand a few feet from a chain-link fence and literally throw the bat barrel the moment your arms are fully extended--right at the point where Reilly's arms are in this frame. Try it to see how much faster the bat comes around.

D. As with throwing, following through while batting is key. Note how the tip of Reilly's bat in this frame winds up precisely where it originated in frame A--that means he's using his entire range of motion. And that means optimal hitting power.

2 CATCHING No one wants to be catcher, but look at it this way: You don't have to stand, and you're closer to the beer keg. When you're behind the plate, put more weight on the ball of the left foot, rather than both feet. It relieves the tension of squatting. Keep hands up at heart level. Don't track the ball; just let it come to you. Ready yourself for catching by widening your stance and bending your knees slightly for increased balance. Finally, consider your progeny. "If that ball's coming in low and fast," says Brent, "for God's sake, protect the family jewels." Tip: Pop-ups, particularly in the infield, will often boomerang backward due to spin. "Never run directly under it," Brent says, "because it will probably land twenty feet behind you."

4 THROWING You probably play in a no-stealing league, but knowing you could pick off a baserunner bolting for second will inspire confidence. When you throw, keep your arm and elbow held high and away from your body. The motion should be smooth, with the body sideways rather than facing the throw, to increase power. And always follow through with a quick downward flick of the index and middle fingers.